Is the Insignia NS-P42Q-10A Native resolution really 1024x768?

[hedshotx]

It came to my attention the other day that the television I have been using for watching movies connected to my computer is a 1024x768 native resolution plasma tv, the Insignia NS-P42Q-10A ( http/www.insigniaproducts.com/products/televisions/NS-P42Q-10A.html ). I've always wondered why the text on the TV and games like Skyrim seemed much darker and just had a weirder picture than on my normal monitor and other television, so the other day I was trying to fix it using the ClearType Text Tuner program in Windows, when it asked me if I wanted to use the 1280x720p recommended resolution. That's when I started to wonder what was up, found the model number for the TV, and found the strange specs for it. My dad got it used somewhere so I never bothered to look because I assumed it was 1080p.

My question is this: How is the TV doing this? If the native resolution is 1024x768, how is it displaying 1080p on my PC and also automatically detecting 1080p and using that setting on my PS4? And to be honest, the picture is pretty good, or perhaps I've been using it so much that I forgot how good Tv's can really look. How is it displaying these 1080p resolutions and looking pretty good and detailed while doing so? Is it because plasmas magically work different than LCD/LED's? I recently played through all of the Witcher 2 and thought it looked beautiful on the TV. Should I get a new television set now that I know my TV is that resolution?

 

[hang-the-9]

It's not 1024x768 resolution, that is a 3:4 resolution, the TV is 16:9 which is 1280x720.

It's not displaying 1080 resolution, it's just taking the input and displaying it's regular 720 resolution. What input it can handle is not the same as what it actually shows on the screen. It's impossible for it to actually display a full 1080 signal, it does not have the physical pixels to do so.

 

[hedshotx]

Did you look at the link to Insignia's website that shows the specs? It says the native resolution is 1024x768

 

[americanaudiophile]

The display is designed for a 1280x720 input but since this doesn't match the native resolution the input is scaled to fit. The spacing between the pixels is not the same throughout the panel. It does produce a pretty good TV picture for the money since it is plasma but as a PC display it will have some issues.

 

[hedshotx]

Gotcha. I was curious the other day and got up close to the display to inspect the pixels to try and figure out why it looked so bad, and sure enough, the spacing like you said in some parts made details such as text just look awful. It was almost like some of the image was stretched to fit the screen size. Very glad I ended up investing in a new Vizio. Thanks for the info and explaining it all to me guys!

 

[hang-the-9]

Did you look at the link to Insignia's website that shows the specs? It says the native resolution is 1024x768

Yes, it does say that, but it's a typo and is wrong.
If you look up a list of resolutions, say on Wikipedia, you will see what resolutions are possible for which aspect ratio. It's a wide-screen TV so can't be 1024x768.

If you look at other sources, they all say it's a 720p TV. 720p is where the 720 comes from in 1280x720 resolution.

 

[americanaudiophile]

It is not a typo. If you look there were a lot of TVs that had non standard native resolution because it was a cheaper panel tp build. They would be called 720p.